In any industry, including the aerospace industry, the costs of manufacture are extremely important. The airplane manufacturer, like any other manufacturer of equipment, is well aware that reducing the costs of the airplane construction and assembly is important to its customers, such as airlines. Lowering costs to the airline may lower costs of travel to the passenger provided, of course, the assembly of the airplane is carried out in a very safe and efficient manner. The present disclosure is directed to accomplishing such goals.
One existing manufacturing technique for assembling parts of an airplane involves the assembly of overlapping sections of the fuselage. An electromagnet is positioned on the exterior of the fuselage while a steel block is positioned on the interior of the fuselage directly opposite the electromagnet. The steel block is precisely positioned with the electromagnet by a communication system between the magnet and the block, such as a permanent magnet and a finder. The electromagnet, when energized, is attracted to the steel block and moves toward the steel block for clamping two or more components between the electromagnet and the block. A drill bit is inserted through the center of the magnet and into a guide bushing. The mechanic drills and countersinks a opening through the two overlapping components or through a sheet metal stack-up. Then a rivet is manually placed into the aligned openings and is driven into the openings using a manual pneumatic insertion system.
A rivet gun and/or a pneumatic hammer is inserted down through the magnet to seat the fastener. The interference fit between the fastener and sheet metal stack holds the parts together, while the electromagnet and clamping block are moved to the next position, as applicable. Later, collars are swaged onto the installed fasteners to complete the installation if huck bolts are utilized as opposed to rivets. A chip removal system has been incorporated into the drilling system to eliminate debris generated from the drilling process. All of the described operations are performed primarily manually. Each opening drilled, each placement of the rivet or other fastener in the opening, and each completion of the securement of the rivet or other fastener in place are individually and manually performed. Although the manufacturing technique described above results in safely assembled components, the manufacturing is basically a manual process requiring at least two or more individuals working from both outside the airplane fuselage and inside the airplane fuselage to accomplish a fastening operation such as riveting.
It would be highly desirable to accomplish the safe and secure manufacture of a sub-assembly of an airplane, such as attaching sections of a fuselage to each other, to the frame, or to other components of the airplane in a more efficient manner. Any increase in the speed of manufacturing sub-assemblies would be highly beneficial.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional manufacturing approaches will become apparent to one skilled in the art through comparison of such approaches with the present disclosure as set forth in the remainder of the present application including the drawings.